Digital Data Collection Assessment - Camo

The way the students identified and described the camouflaged animal pictures we discussed as a class, I thought all the students had a good understanding of the four types of camouflage (color, shape, mimicry and pattern).  Then the assessment was done.  When I read the answers to the form, which were nicely summarized by Google Forms, it became apparent that there were things misunderstood.  A couple pairs talked about the texture of the animal.  I don't recall myself or any student using the word texture to describe the animals/insects in the pictures we went through together.  It wasn't clear to me what they were trying to convey when they used the word texture, so I would like to follow up with those students to understand what they meant.  The answers also showed me that there was confusion about mimicry.  There were pictures classified as mimicry that would have been more appropriate classified as something else.  Mimicry is an area I would revisit. 

I really liked how the Google Doc form was very simple to create and distribute and most of all how it organized the data for me.  I could look through the answers all lined up together to see patterns among students or see that a particular pair of students having difficulty with a concept.  I can then make modifications to my lesson to adjust for problem areas.  Looking back, I would have liked to have read through the responses to the form while Sarah was doing her part of the project and then went over analyzed photos with the class when she was done.  Knowing where the problem or questionable areas were would have helped me focus my efforts during such a review. 

When I first made the form, I didn't include a question asking for the pair's names.  As I was thinking more about how I would know who needs or doesn't need more assistance, I added it.  I'm so glad I did.  I will certainly keep that in mind with all my digital assessments.

Content Delivery Organizer - Camo

To organize the lesson, Mindmeister and Google Docs were used.  What I started with for my portion of the lesson was reviewing a larger tech project I was preparing on camouflage.  I analyzed the information, ideas, strategies and technologies used in that project to determine what I thought were the key items to extract, use and modify to fit within a the shorter delivery time frame.  By mapping it out on Mindmeister and in the more descriptive Google Doc, I could play it out in my mind and on paper how a more abbreviated lesson would come together.  The organizing tools helped me refine, condense and connect the key information yet kept me mindful of the need for engagement.  I personally found the Google Doc more helpful to me in building this lesson.  It allowed me lay out the lesson in a structure that offered more detail and description.  The detail helped me identify the where and how for student engagement taking place in the different parts of the lesson, which gave me a more critical eye for the things to cut, modify and add. By writing it, then reading and mentally visualizing it, then rethinking it, then re-writing and reading the new draft version, and so on, it helped me build the lesson and have it flow in a logical way that would link concepts.  For example, in my larger tech project I created a construction paper board to illustrate camouflage through the use of color (visibility of color on light and dark backgrounds).  I put it in my outline initially but then when I thought about the main point I wanted to make (colors blend in to create camouflage) and the time constraints with the lesson, which caused me to rethink the construction paper board's use, and ultimately came up with the bush/person example.

The content map offered limited value to me; however, I think it was helpful to my partner who could then have an idea of what I was going to cover without having to go into the detail I wanted/needed (and vice versa).  It was a brief summary that could guide her through my lesson structure, and she could use the Google Doc if she wanted to in order to get additional detail.  If I were preparing a lesson in the future with a partner, I would use a content mapping tool because of the value it gives to my partner and me by summarizing the key items and sequencing of those items to guide us through the lesson.  I would also use the Google Doc or a similar tool for the reasons cited earlier.  However, if I was going it alone, I would not use the mapping tool and only use the Google Doc.  The mapping tool is not as value-added and doing it would be extra work, as my Google Doc provides the structure and detail that meets my needs.

Lesson Delivery - Camo

There were a a few different strategies involved in teaching this lesson - collaboration, digital and non-digital visuals with discussion, a personal story about a game the class was familiar with to faciliate connection, physical use of a manipulative.  There was work done collaboratively with a partner (during the assessment piece) and class participation (initial animal slides, apple and invisible man slide discussion).  Visuals, both in digital and non-digital form, were provided and in conjunction with a discussion to make the learning more concrete.  The discussion was done primarily in the form of open-ended questions, having students talk about what they saw in the pictures and how it related to camouflage.  The initial question about the hide and seek game followed by the story/example of hiding behind the bush offered a personal connection that the class could relate to for understanding.  Discussing camouflage in terms of people, animals and art offered a variety of connections that were complimented by the students' own pondering of our questions, which I believe helps them build analytical and critical thinking skills. 

I believe having a discussion with use of questions is a good way to get the students to engage in critical thinking and problem solving. However, fewer individuals participated than I had hoped and some questions were answered by the same couple people regularly.  It made me realize that if I want more involvement, then I need to find a way to increase participation.  I may have needed to pair up students sooner and call on the pairs to answer questions, ask someone who hasn't already answered to answer, be more patient, rethink my questions to determine whether the wording is clear or offer different/additional questions.  The reason I want more involvement is so I can assess whether all the students are really engaged and understanding the concepts along the way so I can hone in on the areas that may require more clarity. 

I noticed that as we mixed things up (from question, to story, to picture discussion, to partner collaboration, to art topics,etc.) students continued follow along.  I didn't notice anyone working on something else or looking elsewhere.  The students appeared to stay focused on both of us throughout, and I attribute some of that to us changing things up over a relatively short period of time.  This tells me that I need to be cognizant of time and be aware of changes in student behavior as an indicator that something may need to be changed, but if we move too fast the students may not be learning the concepts well enough.  Doing this exercise it became more apparent to me that time ongoing assessment is very important so I can keep a good pace that maintains engagement while allowing the students sufficient time to learn. 

The collaboration among the pairs was enlightening.  Hearing the pairs' conversations where they would agree, disagree or question each other along with expressing their reasoning, logic and thoughts provided a way to do an informal assessment of understanding.  I think it would have been more beneficial to have gone over the slides they assessed shortly after they submitted their responses so misunderstandings and errors could be addressed sooner than later.  I would make that change going forward. 

When I mentioned the hide and seek game and told my bush story, the faces of the students changed. This gave me the impression that they were listening and relating.  Because they were familiar with the game and could relate to hiding places, it seemed to me that connections were starting to be created with this lesson.  This reaffirmed to me the value of relating concepts to familiar things.

The apple too was a familiar item but I think the value was for the students to be touching and moving the object to watch how the light "changed" on it.  The students were actively looking and moving their apples around to see the light and discern whether it changed or not.  Seeing the students have a hands on opportunity that they seemed to enjoy and really think about was also an affirmation of the value that can come from appropriate physical manipulatives.  

Hidden Agenda

Hidden Agenda is a lesson on camouflage for third grade students. The lesson starts with a question to understand prior knowledge of the students, asking them to raise their hand if they have ever played the game Hide and Seek. Depending on the level of response, I will have a student summarize how the game works.  Then I will display a construction paper board split in two colors, one with a light background (yellow) and the other with a dark background (black). On the two sides there will be pieces of pipe cleaner in 6 different colors glued in various places (white, yellow, green, red, brown and black).  I will show the board to the students and ask them to tell me about what they see, what colors are easily seen or harder to see ("hidden") and why, comparing and contrasting to the different background colors.  The idea is to get them to see how the dark and light pipe cleaner pieces stand out differently on the black and yellow backgrounds.  I'll turn the conversation to animals and how they hide and seek, asking the students why and how animals would hide and seek.  Asking them how day/night or winter/summer could make a difference in how they hide or seek.  I will relate it back to the pipe cleaner on the light background and the dark background. PowerPoint slides will also be shown to provide pictorial images of camouflaged animals/insects.  I'll show a picture and have the students explain how the animals are hiding in each picture and whether they are camouflaged as the predator or prey. 

Another construction paper board will be displayed showing pipe cleaner glued right next to each other in a clump to convey pattern hiding similar to zebras, where it's harder to discern how many pipe cleaner pieces are there and where the pieces start and end.  This will be followed up with a picture of a herd of zebras to pictorially illustrate the pattern effect.  Lastly, I will ask for a volunteer to help me.  I'll quietly ask the person to stand by me and copy only my actions.  Then I'll ask the class, what is <insert name> doing?  This will be a way to introduce the vocabulary Mimicry, how we can mimick by acting like someone or looking like someone.  I will show slides of animals mimicking other animals as another means to "hide".  The presentation slides are at: http://www.slideshare.net/Tamara_Harmon/camouflage-images


The students will be paired up and asked to work together to analyze and classify 5 animal photos based on how they use camouflage, selecting color, shape, pattern and/or mimicry for each animal or insect.  Their results will be recorded on a piece of paper.  After getting the results, we'll go through the photo classifications as a class with students explaining their logic.  Lastly, the students will be given construction paper and some animal photos to choose from to create their own camouflaged animal with explanation as to how and why they are camouflaged.     


In this lesson, I used the digital technology PowerPoint as well as incorporated non-digital technologies.  The PowerPoint presentation is used to merely make it easier for me to show the animal pictures on a large screen for the whole class to see.  I've used Power Point before, so it was not something new I learned.  However, Slideshare was new for me.  Slideshare provided the avenue to get the Power Point slides linked in my blog and as a means to email the slides to the students for their analysis.  Slideshare was easy to use.  The only part that I was confused by at first was extracting the link.  The instructions said to copy the entire Embed line.  It was quite long and it seemed like there was way too much there to use for the link.  I worked with it more and learned that after I copied the whole thing I could delete most of it and only show the blue line that would make the link work.  I also used my iPhone to take pictures of my construction paper boards and then uploaded them into the blog. That was my first time doing that and it turned out to be quite easy and straightforward to do. 

I really wanted to use non-digital technologies for this tech project.  The non-digital technologies used were the construction paper boards, construction paper, animal pictures for cutting out, and any scissors, glue or drawing utensils needed by the students to make their camouflage animals.  Also, having the student copy me to illustrate the vocabulary meaning for Mimicry is another non-digital tool.   


This lesson incorporates prior learning theory, makes camouflage more concrete and provides for effective collaboration.  Asking the introductory question about the game of Hide and Seek was to ascertain whether the students understand what hiding and seeking mean so it can be related to predators and the prey.  Without having the actual animals in person to illustrate camouflage, using the construction boards and animal photos creates a more concrete way to learn about camouflage than just classroom discussion. The two visual forms (boards and pictures) help illustrate how color and pattern can be used to "hide".  The animal evaluation exercise with a partner provides a collaborative way for students to strengthen their understanding of the concept, by talking together about it as they analyze and decide which criteria applies to each photo. 


A higher level of thinking, as defined by Bloom's taxonomy, happens with this lesson.  The students have to identify (knowledge) and compare (analysis) the initial construction paper boards, explaining why some colors are more "hidden" than others on the different colored backgrounds.  They have to examine the animal photos with a partner (analysis) and choose the criterion that apply (evaluation) and then justify their reasoning (evaluation) when we discuss them as a class.  Lastly, they create their own camouflaged animals (synthesis) using any of the ways we discussed.  The critical thinking and decision making processes described fit within ISTE student standard 4. 


The lesson has implementation struggles.  On the digital end, I may have difficulty getting PowerPoint to operate properly in class.  If so, presuming the Internet is accessible, I could access my Slideshare account and show the slides from there instead of PowerPoint.  I have some websites of camouflaged animals I could go to also if Slideshare is done, though it's more jumping around and less focused.  If the server for the classroom is down, I may not get the computer to work in any capacity, so I plan to have copies of the first set of PowerPoint slides with me to pass out and one I could speak to and show as I move around the room.  I will have paper copies of the pictures for the analysis piece with me also, bringing only half the number of the class size as they will be working in pairs.  The construction paper boards may be hard to see if not made large enough, and those with color blindness may have difficulty discerning the colors, particularly red and green.  The boards will have other colors on it that should still help make the point, but I may need to provide some additional assistance to those with color blindness.   In order to do the picture making project, different supplies are needed.  It will be important to know supplies in advance and have some extras available just in case or have students share. 


A trade-off of using PowerPoint to show the pictures is that the students all can see it at the same time on the screen, but depending on where they are seated in the classroom, the students will not all see it as clearly or as close.  Those closer to the screen may have an advantage in identifying and analyzing the photos.  The construction board comparison can help students see colors that standout and those that are more muted against the two backgrounds; however, the background colors and the pipe cleaner colors are imperfect representations of the colors in nature.  Students may not see the night/day or seasonal connections.  A bias with this lesson is that I'm only focusing on the use of camouflage for animals and not other things that use camouflage (i.e. military use, art). 


In addition to meeting ISTE 4 that was discussed earlier, this lesson also meets ISTE student standard 5.  The photos used in the PowerPoint presentation were all images found within Google Images that were labeled for re-use, and I attributed each photo to the owner. I will point out the credits under the photos and explain why they are there, illustrating and promoting digital citizenship.  I also believe that ISTE standard 5 for teachers was met with this lesson.  Although use of digital technology was not the focal point of this lesson, I can show colleagues the value of using non-digital technologies in addition to digital to make for an effective lesson.       

Research article summary and evaluation
Rethinking Concrete Manipulatives by Douglas H. Clements and Sue McMillen (1996)
Teaching Children Mathematics, 2(5), 270-279. ©1996 by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.
http://investigations.terc.edu/library/bookpapers/rethinking_concrete.cfm

I thought this was an interesting article, speaking to the use of manipulatives to make learning more concrete.  I agreed with the authors' cautionary use of manipulatives, laying out some of the limitations and trade-offs with manipulatives.  I believe it is how a teacher uses manipulatives that makes them helpful and useful aids.  In conjunction, it is important that the teacher is aware of the limitations, trade-offs and biases when determining how to incorporate them in a lesson.  The authors discussed two types of concreteness, integrated and sensory, and stated that ideas are "not simply concrete or not concrete" (1996).  They specifically noted that it is the level of connection and meaning for a math idea that makes it integrated concrete.  This idea of connection aligns with research studies and discussion in my Topics in Math class.  I believe connections are not limited to math, and believe connections  facilitate learning in all subjects. 

The authors used a significant portion of the article to promote using computer manipulatives.  It was beneficial to hear the positive attributes of computer manipulatives for math, but quite disappointing that they only provided the one side.  Trade-offs, limitations and biases were not discussed for the computer manipulatives.  I disagree with this approach and think the authors should have provided a balanced discussion for more appropriate consideration of the tools.  It also fails to promote the idea that teachers need to consider all sides to a manipulative when assessing its use, which is quite interesting given the last section of the paper they offer guidelines on selecting manipulatives including "Select computer manipulatives when appropriate". (1996)